Culture Shock: A Window to Worldbuilding

Our guest today is Gaëtane Burkolter: born in Africa, she spent her early childhood in Switzerland and grew up in Australia. Gaëtane has a Bachelor of Arts (Communications) from the University of Technology, Sydney, and almost twenty years in government communications and public relations. Becoming a parent relatively late in life rocked Gaëtane’s world, opening the floodgates to long-suppressed creativity. She is now a multi-passionate artist pursing writing, photography, and painting. As an introvert and low-techer, she is undecided about whether she has what it takes to make it in the rough and tumble of the publishing world, but she has “sneakily completed” the first draft of a sci-fi novel anyway.

I’m at the end of a four-year term in Italy as a trailing spouse, which has given me plenty of time to savour once again the experience of being an incomer, someone who isn’t the same and doesn’t belong. As a long time sci-fi and fantasy reader, world-building has always fascinated me. I found an enormous number of parallels to that writer’s challenge as I navigated the chaotic streets of Rome, the ancient culture of its people, and the loss of my own place in the world.

Find Gaëtane on Instagram @cajetanedesign, and connect with her through comments to this post—but please note she will be responding from her home in Italy and because of the time difference from the U.S., there may be a delay in her replies.

Culture Shock: A Window To Worldbuilding

In 2012 my family moved from Canberra, Australia, to Rome. The culture shock was enormous. As I observed myself struggling first to blend and then to belong, it struck me that as a writer this was excellent training for world building. Being immersed in a foreign environment and attempting to make it one’s own is akin to placing a reader comfortably in a story.

The Five Senses

My first impressions of Rome were overwhelmingly sensate. Swamping summer heat, clinging like a wet shirt. Umbrella pines, their twisted, sculptural forms silhouetted against the city skyline. Choking clouds of cigarette smoke everywhere, so different to Canberra’s legislated, smoke-free zones.

Sensate cues act like a grappling hook on your readers, pulling them into the scene. Know the environment you’re writing about and fill your readers’ senses with it. Start by by making sure your character is responding to sensate triggers. Make them wrinkle their nose at dog droppings thick on the footpaths, stinking in the heat. Make them wince at the never ending howl of sirens and horns in Rome’s traffic. Let them be intrigued or comforted by the food on offer – artichokes instead of avocadoes, apples instead of mangoes, pork instead of lamb. Keep your character’s responses, well, in character, according to how well they know their surrounds.

Rhythms

Capturing the unique rhythms of a place, from the mundane to the macro, from the slow-turning wheel of the seasons to pensioner discount day at the supermarket, creates authenticity. I liken these rhythms to a heartbeat that speeds up or slows down according to the level of excitement. It’s a background beat, but it gives your world definition and helps your readers tune in.

I love Rome most in winter. The days are shorter, moodier, the rains sweeping in like a dark cloak. The city is quiet, reflective. Museums, piazzas, and restaurants are free of heaving tourist crowds. The streets are washed clean and the plane trees lining the avenues reach bare and twiggy to the cold blue sky. What makes Rome unique for me in this season is that Christmas is not the secular frenzy I’ve seen elsewhere. There are virtually no decorations, no lights, no Christmas goodies in the shops, until after the first weekend in December. There is a restrained build-up, not a beat up, to the special day, and the whole occasion is immeasurably sweeter for it. Choose the rhythms of the environment you’re writing about to complement what’s happening for your characters and their story.

Layers

As with all places, many little clues set locals apart from out of towners on the streets of Rome. The city has more than two thousand water fountains, but only the seasoned drinkers know how to operate them in style. When my kids began swimming lessons, they were the only ones not wearing a bathrobe and flip flops to the side of the pool, and the only ones to leave the centre with wet hair. I thought the bank of fifty machines on the dressing room wall were hand dryers. These strange sights and experiences made our new world “foreign.” With time and patience, like a puzzle coming together, those same things have become “home.”

Yet I’m not a local local.

Familiarity comes in layers. I’ve taken the same tram journey to and from the school for years; all eight, individually named stops of it. Last month a tiny nonna sitting beside me asked whether Piazza Quadrate was next. I hesitated. I didn’t recognise the name, and explained that, no, it was Piazza Buenos Aires. She looked away disdainfully, and got off at that stop anyway. I was puzzled at her response, until the following day a friend explained that Piazza Quadrate is the locals’ name for Piazza Buenos Aires.

Layering shows your readers a lot about your character(s) and the world they live in without the dreaded info dump. Make your characters engage with these nuggets of information, for comedic effect or to build tension, and you’ll take your readers along for the ride.

Culture and convention

As a stranger in a strange land, I’ve been studying the elements that create a country, a city, a neighbourhood. Geography and climate. History and language. Law and commerce and conventions that harden into culture – otherwise defined as “the way we do things around here.”

In my new home, restaurants didn’t open until after my children’s bedtime. Gyms didn’t open until my day was already hours old. I had to change the way I managed my household, because – the siesta. I could not buy milk in containers larger than one litre. That one tiny detail stood out; not so much for the superficial level of irritation it caused me as for what it told me about Italian culture. Italian homes are generally small, with small kitchens and fridges (electricity is very expensive and brown outs are common). Cooking is fresh and seasonal. Malls are not popular. Instead, the city is arranged ino neighbourhoods, stuffed with all the tiny, individual vendors of yesteryear – the butcher, the grocer, the flower stall, the gelataria. People, then, shop daily. And milk comes in small bottles.

In an unknown place, the comforting layer of the familiar and automated is stripped away. Discovering new worlds is one of the delights of reading, but as a writer I need to make this easy for my reader.

Have you taken anything for granted in your world building? Have you assumed that your reader will “know what you mean”? What telling detail encapsulates a convention of your world? Or perhaps you think the seemingly mundane is uninteresting? What unique image or perspective can make a reader see anew?

Comments

So marvelous. I really appreciate the detailed way you dissected world-building (epic fantasy writer, it’s just about my favorite thing). It’s so easy to do poorly and I fear I could be a great example! But this, the tiny doses, the measured shot of information with humor or tension- I especially liked that idea.
Still, it’s very hard. You accurately conveyed how tough it was for you in real life. If only… if only I could TRAP my readers in the book, and give them no choice about leaving, like you had! I’ll have to look into glue, or padlocks. Or maybe an e-book that hypnotizes as you read.

Thank you so much Will. I laughed out loud at your fiendish plans to trap readers. Glue! Padlocks! You already have the tool of humour at your disposal :-) I’m glad you enjoyed the article, and even when it’s hard, never give up. Us epic fantasy readers are keen for new material.

Great seeing you on the blog, Gaëtane! And what a treat this is to read – beautifully written and full of useful lessons. My stories often feature characters who are out of place (a couple of them, tribal Goths, are plopped into Ancient Rome – one as a foederati soldier, the other as a slave), so your examples are particularly apt for me. Grazie mille! Both for this, and for your many valuable contributions to the WU FB community.

Thank you very much Vaughn. I’d like to say that it was a pleasure to work with Julia Munroe Martin on this – she made contributing my first article here very easy and rewarding. With that kind of welcome and support I would encourage other WU members to consider pitching when the opportunity arises. I’m so pleased with myself for daring!

Thank you, Gaëtane, Vaughn, and Therese — you guys are much too kind! As a fellow third culture kid, I can really relate to a lot of what this essay speaks to…and it’s written in such rich and evocative language. It was such a pleasure to work with Gaëtane, as it is with all the wonderful WU guests! Such a great group of writers.

Brilliant! As an American who now lives in a medieval village outside of Rome, I related instantly to all the particulars you discussed. Sensory details ARE a “grappling hook” that draws in readers (and cultural shocked Americans). I love my life here. It is a thousand times more civilized than anything I ever experienced back home.

I have been “taken in” by the creative community here in ways I could never have never anticipated, so the answer to your question is yes. There are 64 people who live in Calcata (well worth the Google), but when I venture to Rome, I am mesmerized by the same things you are: The plane trees along the Tibur, the umbrella pines, the “two note” emergency sirens (so different from the American wail). Funny how I am no longer purely American, but I will never be Italian either. I have a foot in both countries, but am a citizen of neither.

Oh, we loved Calcata – my kids spent the day naming every cat they saw…. I think they managed 27. Wow, it really would be quite an incredible experience to live there. I so relate to that feeling of being neither one thing nor the other, sometimes it’s sublime and other times it’s heartbreaking. Ma, forza and just art harder!

Gaetane,
I don’t know how to pronounce your name, but I suspect it sounds as lovely as your writing—thank you for the inspiration! (I love those drinking fountains!) And your Instagram pics are gorgeous! PS—Hey, @WillHahn up there on the first comment, you really need to write an e-book that hypnotizes you as you read!

Thanks Dee – the fountains are one of my favorite thing, definitely. It staggers me that some of the water still comes through the original aqueducts, built 2,000 years ago (give or take a few centuries). The sense of history in this place gives me vertigo sometimes. The pronunciation of my name varies depending on where I am in the world, so fear not, you are not the first person to wonder, and I answer to all the variations :-)

Thank you for taking me back to Rome, if just for few minutes. It’s all in the sensory details. I’m publishing four almost simultaneously later this year and am working through all of them again now, My editor just told me that my first book had so much evocative detail and that the second book could use more. I’m finishing up the prequel now and this post was just what I need to stop focusing on plot and set the scene. I live here in the Pacific Northwest, where the books are set, but my readers don’t.
Thank you.

Hi Judy, thank you and you’re welcome. Will just note, you are a warrior! Four books in one go… respect. And I agree – sensory details add so much. I just love it when I read something and think to myself, this author really, REALLY knows what they’re talking about. They can make me want to be there so hard – and the PNW. Well. You’ve got some jaw dropping, heart stopping natural beauty to work with. Please, please share that with your readers, and good luck with the series roll out.

This was an awesome read! It’s hard for me to try to add details about the world without overwhelming the reader, so this article was really helpful for me. I love what you say about “layering”, and I’m definitely going to try to implement it next time I write. :)

Thanks Ian :-) I don’t think you’re alone in trying to strike the right balance for the reader, but it’s absolutely worth the effort. I’m glad you’ve found something helpful in my piece. I too will be trying to follow my own advice….!

London is like that for me. I know the quiet of rainy autumn streets in Chelsea, the buzz of my “local” (pub, that is), jazz at Ronnie Scotts and 666, the funny fire doors obstructing passage in hotel hallways, fiery curry, the rattle of the Circle line tube.

It’s in the details. I’ve been a New Yorker for so long now I sometimes don’t notice those details anymore. It’s become too familiar. I envy the worldbuilding you’ve done in your life. Look forward to discovering that in our fiction.

I think that’s one of the greatest things about travel – you don’t only see the new place you find yourself in, you also look back and see your home with new eyes. Value for money, right there. The details you speak of are so evocative – I just wanted to go straight to London and sit in a warm, busy pub for the afternoon, watching the rain on the windows … ahhhh. Thanks for that lovely image, and thanks for your encouragement.

This was a great angle to take on setting. In my current WIP, my setting is a fictionalized version of my hometown, and I am having such fun bringing to life the quirky things that make it “it”–the commercial and leisure traffic on the river that bisects it, the regular trial of waiting at bridges, the surrounding swamp-turned-farmland, the Polish Catholic heritage, the deeply blue-collar workforce, its past life as a booming lumber town. Writing it all out helps me appreciate it in a new way. Thanks for a great post!

Thanks Erin, I really appreciate you taking the time to give me feedback. And I’m so curious now to find out more about your home town. So much fantastic material to work with. I agree, capturing the ‘it-ness’ of a place can be deeply satisfying; I like the idea of having fun with it, rather than agonising over it. Have you ever considered doing a photo walk around the place? Sometimes images can just suck you right into the mind frame you need to write setting (says the mad instagrammer…).
cheers,
G

I love this! I experienced similar things (though on a smaller level) while living in England. It’s funny how even relatively similar cultures have tiny, jarring differences.

The only time I’ve ever experienced full-on culture shock was when I left two weeks in Afghanistan to stay a few days in Dubai. I remember going to the mall to hang out, and all the colors hurt. I kept seeing the mud huts where I’d been just a day before like a veil in front of my face. I actually had to stop and hold my head until the wave passed.

I love putting an outsider into my world and watching them experience the shock, annoyance, and overwhelmed-ness of just existing. It’s a great way to explore the area without info-dumping.

Thanks Alyssa :-) I agree – even the small things can put you in a spin! And that can be hilarious or enraging, confusing, frightening, the spectrum of human emotion, really. Your experience in Afghanistan/Dubai sounds incredibly intense, I felt that wave pass through me too as I read. Wow. Thanks for sharing. And I love your glee at what you put your characters through!